Well I'm under $350 (Cdn) and that was because I salvaged an SSD drive from my old PC. But I also really could have gone with 4GB of RAM instead of 8 and saved $25 and there were cheaper mITX motherboards so it wasn't really my goal to make the cheapest HTPC possible but rather a small, quite and powerful HTPC on a reasonable budget.

I'm replacing my old AMD HTPC that I've been using for quite a few years now. I decided to go with the smaller mini-ITX format and the Mini-Box M350 which measures at 192 x 210 x 62mm... about 1/3 the size of my current HTPC.

While the M350 case was on backorder last week I attached all the components on my desk and installed openELEC (which was a very simple install) and started pre-configering XBMC.

Yesterday the M350 case arrived and I install all the motherboard/CPU/heatsink/fan with no issues but when it came time to install SSD hard drive I ran into some issues with it fitting using retail intel heatsink & fan.... I was eventually able to make it all fit with some modifications which I will be posting later with photos of the build on my website.

1st Impressions & Observations

Took me an hour to figure out why the M350 case wasn't powering up the motherboard when I was pushing the power button. I had the "Power SW" connectors attached to motherboard but there is a 2 pin jumper on on the inside near the power switch that needed to be connected. You would think by default it would have a jumper on it already... but it didn't thus the power switch was disabled.

Fast boot-up into XBMC, about 15 seconds and most of the time is from motherboard power cycle and bios just a few seconds from bios to XBMC. Much faster than my Windows 7 HTPC w/ XBMC

No hardware or display issues, recognized bluetooth keyboard with no issues

After 10-15 mins of running the temp was 113F / 45C

Watching a HD movie (.h264) was using about 10% CPU (on both cores)

Found and scanned my movie/tv collection on my media server with no issues

The internal USB 2.0 cable that goes from front USB port to motherboard wasn't long enough for my motherboard. Also the pins on the case are very close to where the PICO power supply plugs into motherboard. Might be some space issues

To Dos

Move IR receiver from old HTPC to new M350 HTPC. There is no IR window like my old case so I will need to drill a hole to allow IR receiver to be held inside the case.

Looking into the ability to setup IR receiver so it can power on HTPC with IR remote

Program Harmony ONE to work with new HTPC

Possibly make a smaller custom HDD bracket if heat is an issue. Current one blocks part of the CPU fan

Get internal USB extension cable (9 pin, I think) in order to use front USB ports (2 that are internal at the front of case meant for USB WiFi antenna or IR or bluetooth receiver.

Customize XBMC (addons, skins, etc)

Test audio once it's connected to my HDTV

Setup VPN connection for XBMC/OpenELEC

If anyone has some suggestions or comments for my to do list please pass them along. Photos of build and updates to follow...

? no fans other than cpu cooler.
? only SSD should not effect temps.
? case looks well ventilated so as you mentioned may be air flow issue.
? with no internal PSU there should be very little heat generated
? just need to work on lowering heat inside case all else is OK

Move IR receiver from old HTPC to new M350 HTPC. There is no IR window like my old case so I will need to drill a hole to allow IR receiver to be held inside the case.

Removed the Microsoft IR receiver from old HTPC but the circuit board is a little big to fit in the front section of the M350 case. Put the IR receiver back into it's external cover and have it setup outside of the HTPC for now. Remote works great, worst case I leave it as an external IR receiver.

Looking into the ability to setup IR receiver so it can power on HTPC with IR remote

I've done a bit of reading about a few soldering options.

Program Harmony ONE to work with new HTPC

Done for the most part as the Harmony One was already setup for my previous HTPC I just had to use an 3rd party XBMC app addon to link some of the buttons to XBMC commands.

Possibly make a smaller custom HDD bracket if heat is an issue. Current one blocks part of the CPU fan

CPU Core temp usually sits around 53 C / 127 F. Have another option of small case fan sucking air in from front right.

Get internal USB extension cable (9 pin, I think) in order to use front USB ports (2 that are internal at the front of case meant for USB WiFi antenna or IR or bluetooth receiver.

Ordered on ebay. Will move USB wireless keyboard receiver from back USB to inside case once I have extension cable.

I decided to simplify and create a simple clean setup for my home theatre. So far I've removed my PS3, PVR cable box and large HTPC. Removed all unused cables, moved surge protector/power filter from shelve to back (out of sight), built a frame above TV to hold the HT-CT100 Sony sound bar (was previously hanging below TV, moved sub box from the side of TV stand to middle (after removing 2 shelves), placed new HTPC, IR receiver & Harmony One charging station to top shelve and finally hooked up Logitech bluetooth wireless speaker adapter at the back (out of sight).

Nice simple, clean layout.

HTPC ---hdmi---> Sony Sound Bar ---hdmi---> Philips LCD TV

Logitech Wireless Speaker Adapter ---RCA Stereo---> Sony Sound Bar

Philips LCD TV ---hdmi---> spare cord to hook up iPad/iPhone

Setup VPN connection for XBMC/OpenELEC

Setup my PureVPN account (via PPTP) using the OpenELEC VPN config menu in XBMC. It connects and generates an IP address but it doesn't seem to be working when I try some region specific services. Will investigate further when I get a chance.

If anyone has some experience setting up VPN on OpenELEC/XBMC please let me know. I would like to setup but have the option of enabling or disabling VPN as needed.

What I do for powering on my htpc box is plug it into the on/off switch on the back of my receiver and then setup the bios in the htpc to "always on" after loss of power. So when I power up the receiver the htpc gets turned on automatically. Also, when turning off the receiver the htpc also gets shut-off so saves money on any soft-power on or unit sleeping. Of course I normally start shutting down the htpc before the receiver turn-off.

What I do for powering on my htpc box is plug it into the on/off switch on the back of my receiver and then setup the bios in the htpc to "always on" after loss of power. So when I power up the receiver the htpc gets turned on automatically. Also, when turning off the receiver the htpc also gets shut-off so saves money on any soft-power on or unit sleeping. Of course I normally start shutting down the htpc before the receiver turn-off.

So to shutdown it's just cutting the power from the HTPC? Sounds like it could be potential for problems down the road software or even potentially hardware.

So to shutdown it's just cutting the power from the HTPC? Sounds like it could be potential for problems down the road software or even potentially hardware.

Yup...you'll eventually end up with a corrupt files system not to mention Linux needing to run file system checks upon startup when it sees an unexpected power loss...basically not a good idea, most OS's I know (including those on cell phones) are happiest with a controlled power shutdown.

I didn't originally see shutdown on your to-do list, but I use Pulse-eight's HDMI-CEC adapter. Support is builtin to either OE or XBMC (Can't recall or both). I changed the shutdown function in settings to suspend rather than shutdown. I also use the bundled tv remote for controlling OE. It feels nice, and the power off button from the remote sleeps the HTPC. Unfortunately, I have to hit the power button on the box to turn everything back on.

I used to have a better setup with the CEC adapter and an old ehome WMC remote and usb receiver. The CEC adapter turned the TV off when the OE box was put to sleep, and turned the tv on when OE was resumed from sleep. The ehome remote power button actually slept/resume OE just fine. Then OE 3.2 took away the plug n play ability to use both receivers (considers the CEC adapter a receiver - which it can be and I'm using it as currently) simultaneously in the remote.conf (I think). I haven't gone back and downgraded yet, but a lot of others noticed WMC remote issues with the 3.2 upgrade. It was total bliss from 3.0 to 3.2

I guess it sounds like a pain, but there is nothing more worthwhile to me than the simplicity of a single power button (single remote). It was worth the $50 for me

I didn't originally see shutdown on your to-do list, but I use Pulse-eight's HDMI-CEC adapter. Support is builtin to either OE or XBMC (Can't recall or both). I changed the shutdown function in settings to suspend rather than shutdown. I also use the bundled tv remote for controlling OE. It feels nice, and the power off button from the remote sleeps the HTPC. Unfortunately, I have to hit the power button on the box to turn everything back on....

I didn't mention the shutdown procedure because I figured I could program my Logitech Harmony One to shutdown (or suspend) HTPC, turn off TV & sound system with one button. I just haven't got around to that yet.

I never really thought about suspending my HTPC rather than shutdown, I might be able to wake my HTPC with a button press from IR remote if the USB port is powered on suspend. My old HTPC was XBMC running on Windows 7 and everything it would suspend or sleep I would loose the IR receiver for my remote and have to do a reboot to get it back.

So to shutdown it's just cutting the power from the HTPC? Sounds like it could be potential for problems down the road software or even potentially hardware.

I want to point out that my remote shuts down the htpc then the projector (which takes a couple of seconds) then the receiver. It's programmed to do it in that order so my htpc is off before the receiver. I've been doing it this way for a long time and I have not had any corrupt disk problems - it is an ssd.